Asterisk Gateway Interface 1.4 and 1.6 Programming

Table of Contents

• Preface

• Chapter 1: Installing a 'Vanilla' Asterisk
  • Downloading Asterisk
  • Zaptel—Zapata Telephony Driver
  • DAHDI—Digium Asterisk Hardware Device Interface
  • Libpri—ISDN PRI Library
  • Asterisk—the open source PBX
  • Asterisk-addons—the open source PBX
  • Asterisk—SVN source packages
    • Obtaining the source code packages from SVN
    • Compilation dependencies
  • Compiling the source code
    • Compiling and installing Zaptel
      • Step 1: Configure
      • Step 2: Define the options you would like to compile
      • Step 3: Compiling and installing
    • Compiling and installing DAHDI
      • Step 1: Compile the kernel module
      • Step 2: Install the dahdi kernel module
      • Step 3: Compile the dahdi-tools package
      • Step 4: Configure the dahdi-tools to be installed
      • Step 5: Compile and install dahdi-tools
    • Differences between Zaptel and DAHDI
    • Compiling and installing libpri
    • Compiling and installing Asterisk
      • Step 1: Configure
      • Step 2: Define the options you would like to compile
      • Step 3: Compiling the code
  • Summary

• Chapter 2: Basic IVR Development: Using the Asterisk DialPlan
  • The dialplan is a set of "finite state machines"
  • The dialplan syntax
    • The extension
      • Inclusion of contexts
      • The [general] and [global] contexts
      • Extension pattern matching
      • Special extensions
    • Dialplan Switches
    • Variables, applications, and functions
      • Variables—built-in and custom
    • Applications and functions
      • Your first IVR application
  • Summary

• Chapter 3: More IVR Development: Input, Recordings, and Call Control
  • Grabbing and processing user input
    • The Read application
    • Branching—Goto, GotoIf, Gosub, and GosubIf
      • Goto and GotoIf
      • Writing expressions
      • Regular expressions
      • Gosub and GosubIf
      • Exec, ExecIf, and TryExec
    • Macros—Macro and MacroExclusive
      • Additional Asterisk applications
    • Self exploration
  • Summary

• Chapter 4: A Primer to AGI: Asterisk Gateway Interface
  • How does AGI work?
    • EAGI, DeadAGI and FastAGI
      • EAGI—Enhanced Asterisk Gateway Interface
      • DeadAGI—execution on hangup
      • FastAGI—AGI execution via a TCP socket
      • AGI scripting frameworks
    • The AGI application
    • The AGI execution flow
    • The AGI methods API
  • The ten rules of AGI development
    • Rule #1: An AGI script should terminate as fast as possible
    • Rule #2: Blocking applications have no place in AGI
    • Rule #3: Asterisk channels are stateful—use them
    • Rule #4: AGI scripts should manipulate data—no more
    • Rule #5: VM based languages are bad for AGI scripting
    • Rule #6: Binary-compiled AGI is not always the answer
    • Rule #7: Balance your scripts with dialplan logic
    • Rule #8: Balance your scripts with web services
    • Rule #9: Syslog is your friend—use it
    • Rule #10: The Internet is for Asterisk
  • A preface to what's coming ahead
  • Summary

• Chapter 5: AGI Scripting with PHP
  • PHP-CLI vs. PHP-CGI
  • The php.ini configuration file
  • AGI script permissions
  • The structure of a PHP based AGI script
  • Communication between Asterisk and AGI
  • The AGI Hello-World program
  • AGI debugging
  • Summary

• Chapter 6: PHPAGI: An AGI Class Library in PHP
  • Obtaining PHPAGI
  • The file structure of PHPAGI
  • A very simple PHPAGI example
  • The AGI/Dialplan high-wire act
    • Introducing Atomic-AGI
    • Atomic-AGI—a dialplan example
    • SetSessionID.agi—meet your state maintainer
    • agiWrapper.agi—an all purpose AGI execution wrapper
  • A slightly more complex PHPAGI example
    • db_validate_target.inc.php
    • db_register_cdr.inc.php
  • AGI Scripts in popular Asterisk applications
    • FreePBX™—the most popular Asterisk management GUI
    • A2Billing™—a pre-paid calling card system
  • Summary

• Chapter 7: FastAGI: AGI as a TCP Server
  • FastAGI argument handling
    • Asterisk 1.2.X and 1.4.X
    • Asterisk 1.6.X
  • FastAGI error handling
    • Asterisk 1.2.X
    • Asterisk 1.4.X and 1.6.X
  • FastAGI with PHPAGI and xinetd
    • Introducing xintetd—the Internet services daemon
    • Configuring xinetd for FastAGI and PHPAGI
    • Configuring PHPAGI for FastAGI
    • The fastagiWrapper.php bootstrap
    • Performance consideration
  • FastAGI with PHPAGI and Google
  • FastAGI with other tool kits
    • Asterisk::FastAGI—a PERL module for FastAGI handling
    • Asterisk-JAVA—a Java package for Asterisk
  • Summary

• Chapter 8: AMI: The Asterisk Manager Interface
  • AMI—the history
    • How does AMI work?
    • AMI with Asterisk 1.0 and 1.2
    • AMI with Asterisk 1.4 and 1.6
  • AMI–understanding basics
    • Events and Actions
    • Logging in to the Manager Interface
    • Sending actions to the Manager Interface
    • Logging off from the Manager Interface
  • PHPAGI and the AMI Interface
    • Direct AMI interface invocation
    • AMI interface invocation via the PHPAGI class
    • Interacting with the AMI interface
      • Sending actions to the AMI inteface
      • Event callbacks from AMI interface
    • PHPAGI AMI originate quirk
  • Click-2-Call and Web-Callback
    • Demystifying the Asterisk Originate manager action
    • Welcome to Jabka—the world's favourite Click-2-Call
    • AMI proxy servers
    • AJAM—AJAX Enabled Manager
  • Summary

• Chapter 9: Final Programming Project
  • ACRG—Asterisk Call Recording Gateway
    • Requirements
    • Network connectivity—PSTN
  • Project implementation guide
    • Step 1: Analysis of the requirements
    • Step 2: Understanding operational constraints
    • Step 3: Detailed call flow charts
    • Step 4: The Asterisk dialplan context
    • Step 5: Develop your human interfaces
    • Step 6: Test, test, and test again
  • Additional programming projects
    • Click-2-Call
      • Jajah.Com
    • Stateful call masking
    • Punk'ed call
    • Date rescue call
    • Conference bridge
  • Summary

• Chapter 10: Scaling Asterisk Applications
  • Scaling Asterisk platforms
    • Database query caching
      • Starting up
      • Using it in a script
    • Utilization of web services
      • Introduction to XML-RPC
    • Apache versus Lighttpd
      • Virtualization and cloud computing
  • Summary

• Index

Nir Simionovich

I enjoyed reading this book much more than I thought I would.

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